Researchers are eyeing the world’s most basic element—water—as a potential solution for the challenge of how to store renewable energy for long-term use.

A team from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIAS) has shown in new research that something called seasonal pumped hydropower storage (SPHS) could be an affordable and sustainable way to store both energy and water annually.

“The energy sectors of most countries are undergoing a transition to renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar generation,” says IIASA postdoc Julian Hunt, one of the researchers on the project, in a press statement. “These sources are intermittent and have seasonal variations, so they need storage alternatives to guarantee that the demand can be met at any time.”

Hunt and his collaborators believe hydrogen is the most viable long-term energy storage to resolve these variations in electricity generation. However, this type of storage is not yet economically feasible, which is why the IIAS team set out to analyze SPHS from multiple perspectives to make a case for its use.

Researchers used computer modeling to provide the first global and high-resolution analysis of the potential and costs for SPHS technology, proving it could be a long-term option to store renewable energy during times when it isn’t as readily available as peak times, Hunt said.

SPHS requires pumping water into a deep storage reservoir–which must be built parallel to a major river–during times of high water flow or low energy demand. If water is scarce or demand for energy increases, the reservoir can release stored water to generate electricity.

The analysis done by the IIAS team took a global approach to where and how to store energy and water seasonably using SPHS, as well as what the costs might be to implement solutions. Researchers used topographical, river network and hydrology data, infrastructure cost estimation, and project design optimization, to identify sites that could work for SPHS deployments.

The team hopes their findings will help promote the use of SPHS to help the world adopt renewable energy over traditional fossil fuels and other types of power that are releasing harmful emissions and depleting valuable resources from the earth, Hunt said.

Global energy player Total will build a battery-based energy storage project in France’s Dunkirk port district.

The battery project will be built with an investment of nearly €15m and will have 25MWh storage capacity and 25MW power output.

Total chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said: “This project is part of Total’s strategy to develop the stationary energy storage solutions that are critical to the expansion of renewable energy, which is intermittent by nature.

“It will contribute towards the goal of increasing the share of renewables in France’s energy mix while helping to stabilise the domestic power grid. Total’s involvement in the electricity segment continues to expand.

“With more than 40% allocated storage capacity, Total was the leading winner of the first call for tenders organised by RTE (France’s Electricity Transmission Network).

“This success was made possible thanks to the competencies of Total Flex, a renewable energy aggregation expert, and Saft, the European leader in batteries for energy storage.”

Scheduled for commissioning later this year, the new lithium-ion energy storage system is claimed to be the largest in France.

Towers of concrete blocks as tall as skyscrapers, a ski lift-like contraption on the side of a mountain, underground caverns — the quest for more ways to back up the increasing amount of wind and solar energy on the grid has recently driven investment toward a number of unusual technologies.

Now, the ability to serve a cleaner but more variable grid has become part of the pitch for a technology that has been around for decades but is still seeking commercialization: molten salt nuclear reactors, which have been promoted for years by investors like Bill Gates, who say that a new version of nuclear power is necessary to provide on-demand, carbon-free energy.

Developers of so-called “advanced reactors” — those that use designs fundamentally different from the light-water reactors that make up the existing U.S. power reactor fleet — want to combine a number of revenue streams into a package for potential customers. These uses include load-following to help the grid deal with intermittent renewable energy, the ability to provide power when not connected to external transmission lines (blackstart capability) and heat for industrial processes.

Advanced reactor developers believe these additional capabilities can provide an escape from the current situation facing the nuclear industry, which is struggling with high capital costs that have made the construction of new conventional power reactors extremely challenging in North America and Europe for the foreseeable future.

“We are innovating to solve what we believe is the biggest limit on new nuclear builds in the west — conventional technology is unaffordable and non-cost-competitive,” Simon Irish, CEO of advanced reactor developer Terrestrial Energy, told Utility Dive in an interview.

The molten salt reactor is just one type of nuclear design but, due to the ability of molten salt to contain and store heat at extremely high temperatures, proponents say it is particularly well-suited to the grid of the future.

According to the U.S. Energy Storage Association (ESA) and Wood Mackenzie, Q4 2019 marks the largest-ever quarter for storage deployments across all U.S. market segments.

It was a record quarter for power capacity with the U.S. deploying 186.4 MW and 364.2 MWh of energy storage.

Front-of-the-meter (FTM) installations appeared to growing faster than the behind-the-meter segment. The FTM market grew 160% in quarter-over-quarter growth, with 103.8 MW deployed in Q4 2019. The FTM market accounted for 56% of quarterly deployments, in MW terms, after two consecutive quarters in which it made up less than 50%, according to the report from ESA and WoodMac.

Because of PJM’s appetite for 1-hour duration storage in the Reg D regime, the growth on a megawatt-hour basis was slower than MW-based growth.

Kelly Speakes-Backman, ESA CEO, said in a release, “The electricity system of today and tomorrow relies on energy storage expansion, inclusion and integration. To accelerate its resilience, reliability and economic benefits, it is critical that federal lawmakers enact a standalone federal energy storage tax credit.”

Shutoffs and mandates driving California storage

Driven by California’s involuntary Public Safety Power Shutoffs and perhaps by the state’s solar mandate, California led the behind-the-meter (BTM) segment, while Massachusetts led the FTM rankings.

BNEF claims that customers installing solar are “willing to pay a premium to add storage for backup.” According to a recent report, BNEF expects 50,000 residential battery systems to be installed his year — up from the 19,000 California homes that had batteries in 2019.

According to the ESA report, the residential storage market saw another strong quarter, with 40.4 MW installed in Q4 2019. The non-residential BTM sector recorded its second-strongest quarter on record, with 42.2 MW deployed.

“The BTM segment had a banner year,” said Brett Simon, WoodMac senior analyst. “California continues to be a market to watch and we expect almost one in four residential solar systems across the state to have storage attached in 2020.

The latest quarterly US Energy Storage Monitor, produced by the national Energy Storage Association and analysis firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, has predicted annual deployments will reach 7.3GW by 2025.

A more than 14-fold increase is forecast, from 523MW recorded in 2019, with the “sharp scale-ups” both regionally and nationally to be driven primarily by a combination of “utility procurements and the accelerating residential market,” the report claims.

Over the next two years alone, the first really big utility procurements of energy storage are set to come online, causing an expected trebling of the market volume this year and then more than doubling again in 2021.

While supply constraints noted in the front-of-meter (utility grid-connected) market are pushing some projects back from the beginning of this year to 2021 or later, even during the period that these delays were beginning to be experienced, “the scale of planned large-scale system planning has surged,” according to Wood Mackenzie analysts.

“The U.S. energy storage market has shown rapid growth over the past decade, moving from pilot to commercial scale, but perhaps most remarkable is the geographic breadth and diversity of its success,” the report said, adding that energy storage is proving a range of services nationwide that shows it has “found a foothold”.

7.2GW annual market roughly equates to US$7.2 billion
These services include grid-level storage delivering ancillary services in territories including the New England ISO system operator service area, PJM Interconnection, Texas’ ERCOT, CAISO in California and others. Meanwhile, storage paired with solar is on the increase, as is the deployment of energy storage in lieu of more expensive transmission and distribution network upgrades.

While it still needs a signature from Governor Ralph Northam, the US Commonwealth of Virginia’s bicameral lawmaking body has finally passed a version of a recent clean energy – and economy – bill that has proven acceptable to both sides of the house.

The finalised, much-amended bill can be viewed here, setting out the technical and policy conditions by which Virginia can reach Governor Northam’s proposed goal of 100% renewables by 2050. This includes peak shaving programmes; support for rooftop solar and for wind energy; coal phase-out mandates for utilities Dominion Energy and American Electric Power, which have held sway in the energy mix until now; and a 3,100MW energy storage deployment target by 2035 (with 2,700MW for Dominion and 400MW for AEP).

The core element of the bill is that it replaces existing voluntary renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for utilities with mandatory ownership or power purchase arrangements. In addition to compliance with energy efficiency programmes, the finally passed bill orders utilities to procure between 5,000MW and 16,100MW of solar PV generation, ranging from commercial rooftop systems from 50kW capacity and up to 100MW. Utilities are also ordered to own or operate up to 5,000MW of offshore wind generation.

The bill also includes protection policies for low-income families, as well as low-interest loans for flood defences in applicable communities.

Andrew Williams, senior director of regulatory affairs and market development at Sol Systems, a US-based solar energy finance, development and investment company, sent a statement to PV Tech that said that Virginia could “catapult” forward as a “clean energy leader by mandating a renewable energy portfolio standard that sets a clear path to meet [Governor Northam’s] goal of reaching a 100% clean energy power sector by mid-century”.

“Once signed into law, the Act will create thousands of jobs and help ensure communities across the Commonwealth have access to and benefit from solar energy and will help ensure that billions of new dollars will be invested in the Commonwealth,” Sol Systems Andrew Williams said.

The US Energy Storage Association’s policy director Jason Burwen meanwhile tweeted on Friday his excitement that the bill’s energy storage target is larger than either California’s or New York’s (albeit with a slightly longer timeframe) and includes a mandatory 10%-plus of customer-sited storage systems and 35%-plus of competitively provided energy storage.

Over half a billion Africans lack access to electric power. As one of the biggest drivers of economic growth, energy is vital to development across Sub-Saharan Africa and yet many are being left behind.

However, new technologies in energy storage and accessibility are changing the continent’s fortunes. As many countries across Africa are not burdened with an ageing energy network, the continent can whole heartedly embrace the clean energy revolution and move to rapidly develop low-carbon and low-cost energy systems.

Central to this transition is small-scale renewable energy combined with storage. Africa has no shortage of daytime sunlight and rooftop solar panels can generate clean energy to be stored in batteries for use at night.

Energy storage-as-a-service models can make it work
The potential for the technologies is vast, but substantial investment is required to meet the continent’s energy needs. The price of solar panels and batteries remains substantially too high for most households. That’s where ‘energy storage-as-a-service’ (ESaaS) can play a huge role.

ESaaS financial models effectively allow off-grid families to rent batteries, solar panels and appliances, such as a fridge, TV or light, for less than $10 a month. This innovative approach is making comprehensive and traditionally costly off-grid energy offerings affordable.

Mobile pay networks are also fundamental in enabling pay as you go (PAYG) schemes such as ESaaS to flourish. As mobile network operators improve connection services across the continent, more Africans can access digital payment capabilities enabling them to make the monthly payments for these clean technologies more easily.

By embracing innovative solutions such as ESaaS, off-grid communities across Africa have the opportunity to rapidly develop a decentralised, low-cost and low-carbon power supply. Under such a network, traditional fossil fuel alternatives – such as kerosene – can be eliminated from the African home, minimising the risk of harm to the user through hot spillages or toxic gasses, and preventing damaging emissions from seeping into our atmosphere.

A revolutionary shift is underway in the electricity we use, and few people are even aware it’s happening. For years, much of the conversation has been about trying to get people to think green and make small changes in their lives to make a difference for the planet.

Meanwhile an idea has been taking root quietly, one with massive scale ramifications. That idea is large-scale energy storage, which has less to do with the average consumer and more to do with the decision-makers on where our energy comes from.

To understand the concept of energy storage, one must first understand the fundamental shortcomings of our electrical grid. The way the grid works sounds straightforward enough: When electricity is generated through wind, solar, or even traditional power-generation sources like coal-fired power plants, that electricity has to be pushed to the grid to be used immediately. If it goes unused, it’s essentially lost forever.

If you’ve ever driven by a wind farm and noticed that some or most of the wind turbines (Fig. 1) aren’t spinning, it’s not always because the wind isn’t blowing. Often, they aren’t spinning because the grid doesn’t need the electricity at that moment, so the wind turbines are shut down, otherwise known as curtailment.

However, energy-storage systems represent the future of utility-scale energy management, theoretically allowing every type of electricity-generation system to harvest the electricity at any time of the day and hold it in reserve for use whenever the grid actually needs it. This stands in sharp contrast to the status quo of “use it or lose it.”

But alas, nothing is that simple. While energy-storage systems have demonstrated their ability to be effective in practice, the cost far outweighs the benefit. That’s why changes in battery manufacturing, small and nuanced as they may seem, are so critical to the energy-storage sector, utilities, and most broadly, human life.

The Li-Ions

More recently, lithium-ion battery storage systems have been developed. These are capable of packing in enough energy, hopefully produced by renewables such as wind and solar at a low-enough price, to make utility-scale energy storage a practical addition for optimizing electricity-producing systems.

LONDON — Europe needs an immense rollout of energy storage and other flexible energy resources if it’s going to hit its 2050 net-zero target. As of today, the market largely remains stuck.

To date, Europe’s big successes on the energy storage front have come from tenders to provide frequency response and other grid services. But those needs have largely been met; prices have fallen and a very short-lived boom has busted.

The decline was accelerated by better integration of Europe’s markets, allowing assets in one country to provide services in others.

“Let me tell you a secret from continental Europe: Batteries are dead,” said Jochen Schwill, CEO of virtual power plant operator Next Kraftwerke, speaking at the recent Energy Storage Summit in London.

Prices on the frequency and primary reserve markets have been halved, Schwill told attendees. “It’s not working anymore,” he said. “When it comes to short-term flexibility, I think we have enough in the market.”

“When we take nuclear power and coal offline in Germany and add in renewables, the market might then send the price up again; we will see.”

The market can, of course, get things wrong, he added.

In any case, things had better start improving for Europe’s storage market. Recent research by Wood Mackenzie found that Europe is going to need 118 gigawatts of flexibility to balance out 298 gigawatts of variable renewable generation expected by 2040. That includes demand-side response, interconnectors and gas peakers as well as energy storage.

Energy storage deployments in New York have grown faster than anticipated since the state began a major push in 2018, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in 2018 that the state had set an energy storage target of 1.5 gigawatts by 2025. The goal is to reach 3.0 gigawatts by 2030. Bridge incentives worth $350 million were authorized to help accelerate New York’s energy storage market.

Since then, NYSERDA has awarded incentive funds to nine projects that total 360 megawatts and nearly 1,400 megawatt-hours, Greentech Media reported.

“Across the board, it’s grown faster than we expected it would when we scoped out the incentive and roadmap,” Jason Doling, who oversees NYSERDA’s energy storage program, told the outlet. Even though the state project incentives decrease over time, that hasn’t slowed development because project costs have been declining, he noted.

Last September saw the completion of the state’s largest ever lithium-ion battery installation — Key Capture Energy’s 20-megawatt project in Saratoga County. Besides being the largest, it was the first under NYSERDA’s energy storage incentive program.

The public benefit corporation says that New York’s energy storage industry could provide an estimated $3 billion in gross benefits by 2030, including reducing carbon dioxide emissions and contributing to the state’s goal of reaching 50% electricity from renewable sources.

“There is a growing appetite for storage and storage paired with intermittent [renewables] to meet peak demand,” Doling said, according to Greentech Media. “That won’t change; that will only increase.”